Retrieving the Ethnic World of the Adis: An Ecocritical Reading of Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam

Abstract

Northeast India is the home to different ethnic groups with a variety of cultures, languages, religions and is regarded as the melting pot of diverse races, castes, and cultures. It is one of the most under-represented regions of India. The troubled political atmosphere, the scenic landscape, and the confluence of various ethnic groups in the region perhaps have given rise to a body of literary writings that is entirely different from the rest of India. Like the region itself, literature in English from the Northeastern part of India has also been stereotyped. But if we make a critical study at the literary writings of this region, we will find that most of the authors such as Mamang Dai, Temsula Aao, Aruni Kashyap, Easterine Kire are consciously incorporating the geopolitical and environmental issues like the ecological degradation of the region, the exploitation of resources, radical climate change of the land, deforestation, encroachment, poaching, etc. in their writings. For instance, Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam is a novel that has a strong ecological concern. History, myth, tradition, memory, and fiction merge together in this novel, which showcases the unique ecology of Arunachal Pradesh. The clash between tradition and modernity and the degeneration of traditional values during the colonial period as well as the ecological degradation of the land can well be studied from an ecological viewpoint. The novel advocates the restoration of the age-old bond between man and the nature as a way of retaining the identity of the tribal communities in the contemporary world of globalization and modernization.